Reading section 101

He will appear as the friend and helper of Ráma farther on in the poem.

164 The famous pleasure-garden of Kuvera the God of Wealth.

165 “The whole of this Canto together with the following one, regards the belief, formerly prevalent in India, that by virtue of certain spells, to be learnt and muttered, secret knowledge and superhuman powers might be acquired. To this the poet has already alluded in Canto xxiii. These incorporeal weapons are partly represented according to the fashion of those ascribed to the Gods and the different orders of demi-gods, partly are the mere creations of fancy; and it would not be easy to say what idea the poet had of them in his own mind, or what powers he meant to assign to each.” SCHLEGEL.

166 “In Sanskrit _Sankára_, a word which has various significations but the primary meaning of which is _the act of seizing_. A magical power seems to be implied of employing the weapons when and where required. The remarks I have made on the preceding Canto apply with still greater force to this. The MSS. greatly vary in the enumeration of these _Sankáras_, and it is not surprising that copyists have incorrectly written the names which they did not well understand. The commentators throw no light upon the subject.” SCHLEGEL. I have taken the liberty of omitting four of these which Schlegel translates “Scleromphalum, Euomphalum, Centiventrem, and Chrysomphalum.”

167 I omit, after this line, eight _ślokes_ which, as Schlegel allows, are quite out of place.

168 This is the fifth of the _avatárs_, descents or incarnations of Vishṇu.

169 This is a solar allegory. Vishṇu is the sun, the three steps being his rising, culmination, and setting.

170 Certain ceremonies preliminary to a sacrifice.

171 A river which rises in Budelcund and falls into the Ganges near Patna. It is called also _Hiraṇyaráhu_, Golden-armed, and _Hiraṇyaráha_, Auriferous.

172 The modern Berar.

173 According to the Bengal recension the first (Kuśámba) is called Kuśáśva, and his city Kauśáśví. This name does not occur elsewhere. The reading of the northern recension is confirmed by Foê Kouê Ki; p. 385, where the city _Kiaoshangmi_ is mentioned. It lay 500 _lis_ to the south-west of _Prayága_, on the south bank of the Jumna. _Mahodaya_ is another name of Kanyakubja: _Dharmáraṇya_, the wood to which the God of Justice is said to have fled through fear of Soma the Moon-God was in Magadh. Girivraja was in the same neighbourhood. See Lasson’s I, A. Vol. I. p. 604.

174 That is, the City of the Bent Virgins, the modern Kanauj or Canouge.

175 Literally, Given by _Brahma_ or devout contemplation.

176 Now called Kośí (Cosy) corrupted from Kauśikí, daughter of Kuś]a.

“This is one of those personifications of rivers so frequent in the Grecian mythology, but in the similar myths is seen the impress of the genius of each people, austere and profoundly religious in India, graceful and devoted to the worship of external beauty in Greece.” GORRESIO.

177 One of the names of the Ganges considered as the daughter of Jahnu. See Canto XLIV.

178 The Indian Crane.

179 Or, rather, geese.

180 A name of the God Śiva.

181 Garuḍa.

182 Ikshváku, the name of a king of Ayodhyá who is regarded as the founder of the Solar race, means also a _gourd_. Hence, perhaps, the myth.

183 “The region here spoken of is called in the Laws of Manu _Madhyadeśa_ or the middle region. ‘The region situated between the Himálaya and the Vindhya Mountains … is called _Madhyadeśa_, or the middle region; the space comprised between these two mountains from the eastern to the western sea is called by sages Áryávartta, _the seat of honourable men_.’ (MANU, II, 21, 22.) The Sanskrit Indians called themselves Áryans, which means _honourable_, _noble_, to distinguish themselves from the surrounding nations of different origin.” GORRESIO.

184 Said to be so called from the Jambu, or Rose Apple, abounding in it, and signifying according to the Puránas the central division of the world, the known world.

185 Here used as a name of Vishṇu.

186 Kings are called the husbands of their kingdoms or of the earth; “She and his kingdom were his only brides.” _Raghuvaṅśa._

“Doubly divorced! Bad men, you violate A double marriage, ’twixt my crown and me, And then between me and my married wife.”

King Richard II. Act V. Sc. I.

187 The thirty-three Gods are said in the _Aitareya Bráhmaṇa_, Book I. ch. II. 10. to be the eight Vasus, the eleven Rudras, the twelve Ádityas, Prajápati, either Brahmá or Daksha, and Vashatkára or deified oblation. This must have been the actual number at the beginning of the Vedic religion gradually increased by successive mythical and religious creations till the Indian Pantheon was crowded with abstractions of every kind. Through the reverence with which the words of the Veda were regarded, the immense host of multiplied divinities, in later times, still bore the name of the Thirty-three Gods.

188 “One of the elephants which, according to an ancient belief popular in India, supported the earth with their enormous backs; when one of these elephants shook his wearied head the earth trembled with its woods and hills. An idea, or rather a mythical fancy, similar to this, but reduced to proportions less grand, is found in Virgil when he speaks of Enceladus buried under Ætna:”

“adi semiustum fulmine corpus Urgeri mole hac, ingentemque insuper Ætnam Impositam, ruptis flammam expirare caminis; Et fessum quoties mutat latus, intre mere omnem iam, et cœlum subtexere fumo.”

Æneid. Lib. III. GORRESIO.

189 “The Devas and Asuras (Gods and Titans) fought in the east, the south, the west, and the north, and the Devas were defeated by the Asuras in all these directions. They then fought in the north-eastern direction; there the Devas did not sustain defeat. This direction is _aparájitá_, _i.e._ unconquerable. Thence one should do work in this direction, and have it done there; for such a one (alone) is able to clear off his debts.” HAUG’S _Aitareya Bráhmanam_, Vol. II, p. 33.

The debts here spoken of are a man’s religious obligations to the Gods, the Pitaras or Manes, and men.

190 Vishṇu.

191 “It appears to me that this mythical story has reference to the volcanic phenomena of nature. Kapil may very possibly be that hidden fiery force which suddenly unprisons itself and bursts forth in volcanic effects. Kapil is, moreover, one of the names of Agni the God of Fire.” GORRESIO.

192 Garuḍ was the son of Kaśyap and Vinatá.

193 Garuḍ.

194 A famous and venerated region near the Malabar coast.

195 That is four fires and the sun.

196 Heaven.

197 Wind-Gods.

198 Śiva.

199 The lake Vindu does not exist. Of the seven rivers here mentioned two only, the Ganges and the Sindhu or Indus, are known to geographers. Hládiní means the Gladdener, Pávaní the Purifier, Naliní the Lotus-Clad, and Suchakshu the Fair-eyed.

200 The First or Golden Age.

201 Diti and Aditi were wives of Kaśyap, and mothers respectively of Titans and Gods.

202 One of the seven seas surrounding as many worlds in concentric rings.

203 Śankar and Rudra are names of Śiva.

204 “Śárṅgin, literally _carrying a bow of horn_, is a constantly recurring name of Vishṇu. The Indians also, therefore, knew the art of making bows out of the hons of antelopes or wild goats, which Homer ascribes to the Trojans of the heroic age.” SCHLEGEL.

205 Dhanvantari, the physician of the Gods.

206 The poet plays upon the word and fancifully derives it from _apsu_, the locative case plural of _ap_, water, and _rasa_, taste.… The word is probably derived from _ap_, water, and _sri_, to go, and seems to signify _inhabitants of the water_, nymphs of the stream; or, as Goldstücker thinks (Dict. s.v.) these divinities were originally personifications of the vapours which are attracted by the sun and form into mist or clouds.

207 “_Surá_, in the feminine comprehends all sorts of intoxicating liquors, many kinds of which the Indians from the earliest times distilled and prepared from rice, sugar-cane, the palm tree, and various flowers and plants. Nothing is considered more disgraceful among orthodox Hindus than drunkenness, and the use of wine is forbidden not only to Bráhmans but the two other orders as well.… So it clearly appears derogatory to the dignity of the Gods to have received a nymph so pernicious, who ought rather to have been made over to the Titans. However the etymological fancy has prevailed. The word _Sura_, a God, is derived from the indeclinable _Swar_ heaven.” SCHLEGEL.

208 Literally, high-eared, the horse of Indra. Compare the production of the horse from the sea by Neptune.

209 “And Kaustubha the best Of gems that burns with living light Upon Lord Vishṇu’s breast.”

_Churning of the Ocean._

210 “That this story of the birth of Lakshmí is of considerable antiquity is evident from one of her names _Kshírábdhi-tanayá_, daughter of the Milky Sea, which is found in _Amarasinha_ the most ancient of Indian lexicographers. The similarity to the Greek myth of Venus being born from the foam of the sea is remarkable.”

“In this description of Lakshmí one thing only offends me, that she is said to have four arms. Each of Vishṇu’s arms, single, as far as the elbow, there branches into two; but Lakshmí in all the brass seals that I possess or remember to have seen has two arms only. Nor does this deformity of redundant limbs suit the pattern of perfect beauty.” SCHLEGEL. I have omitted the offensive epithet.

211 Purandhar, a common title of Indra.

212 A few verses are here left untranslated on account of the subject and language being offensive to modern taste.

213 “In this myth of Indra destroying the unborn fruit of Diti with his thunderbolt, from which afterwards came the Maruts or Gods of Wind and Storm, geological phenomena are, it seems, represented under mythical images. In the great Mother of the Gods is, perhaps, figured the dry earth: Indra the God of thunder rends it open, and there issue from its rent bosom the Maruts or exhalations of the earth. But such ancient myths are difficult to interpret with absolute certainty.” GORRESIO.

214 Wind.